Woman of Interest: Emily Mortimer

The Match Point star tackles Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO show, The Newsroom.
I play the executive producer of a nightly news show who has a complicated relationship with the anchor, Jeff Daniels.

She prefers British news.
TV news is disappointing here, but that is Sorkin’s point. In England [where she was born], it’s less sensational, and you get more international reporting.

Her surprising crush
I’m besotted with [MSNBC anchor] Chris Matthews. He manages to be passionate and to be himself, without that annoying arch tone anchors all seem to have. When I took this part, I thought, Maybe if I do this show, I might get to meet him!

Becoming American
I wept at my naturalization ceremony. The judge said, “America is a better place because you fine people have made the difficult journey to be here.” Everybody was a different color. That’s what’s great about America: You value the people who come here.

Fallback career
I can link sausages. My maternal grand-father was a pig farmer from Kent. My grandmother used to make sausages, and I’d help. There’s an art to linking them. If I was ever called on to do it in a film, I would be brilliant.

Honoring her father
My dad [barrister and author Sir John Mortimer] was a big proponent of penal reform. When he died, I started visiting a remand center in Brooklyn for women waiting for their trials. These women aren’t monsters but people just like you and me whose lives very often have taken terrible turns.